Queens

Just as the city is about to burst out in bloom, its time to celebrate Earth Day and Arbor Day. Earth Day is on April 22 and National Arbor Day is April 29 but there are events spreading across the next two weeks that bring our attention to our beautiful planet and how we can be a little nicer to her. Check these out:

You’re rushing to get up your Halloween decorations tonight so tomorrow you can carve the pumpkin and dress the kids. But, once you get them dressed up, you gotta take them out and parade them around. Have you thought about that? Do you know where you are taking them?

City Parks Foundation offers a traveling puppet show, City Parks Puppet Mobile, the oldest continually operating company of its kind in the country, which presents free performances and puppet-making workshops in neighborhood parks, recreation centers and schools throughout New York City.

CityParks PuppetMobile, one of the only traveling puppet theaters in the country, brings Swedish Cottage productions to all corners of the city, free of charge. Performances are held in parks, playgrounds and recreation centers. Puppet making workshops are also offered where children learn about the art of puppetry and create their own puppets.

In the current production of “Little Red’s Hood”, Little Red is a smart, young city slicker who is too focused on her smartphone to notice her surroundings. Wulfric is a misunderstood wolf with a sweet tooth. When Little Red travels from New York City to the country to deliver some cupcakes to her Grandma, she encounters a colorful cast of characters as Wulfric the Wolf tries to head her off at the pass.

New in Chinatown this week the city erected a street map kiosk, part of a new pedestrian map system, called WalkNYC, that will start with just four kiosks in lower Manhattan. The city Department of Transportation hopes to install up to 100 by the end of the year all over Manhattan, as well as in parts of Queens and Brooklyn. More maps will also be posted in high-traffic subway stations and along Select Bus Service routes to replace the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s current neighborhood maps.”There is a clear need for this system,” said Janette Sadik-Khan, the city’s Transportation commissioner, standing next to one of the gleaming black kiosks Monday afternoon. She noted that a recent survey found that one in three New Yorkers could not correctly identify north, and that at any given time, 10% of New Yorkers were lost. Never mind the tourists who struggle negotiating the streets of Manhattan.In the months to come, the city says it plans to install more signs in Manhattan at “key crossings” in Manhattan’s garment district; in Prospect Heights and Crown Heights in Brooklyn; and in Long Island City, Queens.The system is similar to a nine-year-old program in the U.K. called “Legible London” and was designed by with the help of British engineers. City officials said work was underway on a citywide map, the data of which will be made available to software engineers for smartphone app development. The full city map, which officials said will be more accurate than Google or other online maps, will be completed by the end of 2014.